Animal and fish resources minister Giriraj Singh at the meet in Patna on Friday. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Dairy by products would help farmers across the state reap better profits in the near future.

Bihar Industries Association (BIA), through its enterprise development programme, would form clusters of farmers and teach them the basics of dairy business and how to earn profit by selling a variety of by products such as khoya, paneer, bio-pesticide and vermicompost (organic manure).

An entrepreneur would help each cluster of farmers to take their by-products through various marketing channels and finally sell them at a profitable price.

Animal and fish resources minister Giriraj Singh inaugurated the programme in the presence of entrepreneurs and BIA officials at the BIA Hall on Friday.

The farmers would learn how to make profits through selling dairy by-products through this programme.

Elaborating on how the programme would work, Sanjeev Srivastava, one of the members of BIA, said: “We will form farmers’ clusters, each comprising 300-500 farmers, in different districts of the state. Every farmer would be given two cows and taught the basics of dairy business.

He added: “Farmers will be also taught how to make profit through dairy by-products. They would be taught to make khoya and paneer from milk besides bio-pesticide from cow urine and vermicompost and bio-gas from cow dung.”

“Our main aim is to make farmers pick up skills to earn a good amount of money and become independent. One can gauge how much profit a farmer could make through dairy business by selling bio-pesticide and cow dung besides milk. Cow urine is widely used in the medicine industry. Farmers will make more profit because they will work in clusters. The risk factor will be much low too,” said Srivastava.

Giriraj Singh, who was the chief guest at the inaugural function on Friday, said there were immense possibilities in the dairy business.

Singh added that if any private company wanted to foray into the dairy business in Bihar, it would not need any no-objection certificate.

“At present, only 8 per cent milk is processed in Bihar. The state government intends to increase this figure to 40 per cent. So if private companies want to enter the dairy business in Bihar, we welcome them. We would not ask them to produce no-objection certificates,” said Singh.

Singh also spoke about the need for breeding in Bihar: “Experts need to develop hybrids in Bihar. Bihar is far beyond the other north Indian states, including Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh among others, as far as hybrid is concerned. Experts need to develop hybrids in Bihar because the dairy business would not prosper in Bihar in their absence,” added Singh.